Legal threat to commercial Linux users

By Sam VargheseMay 15 2003

The owner of the UNIX operating system today warned that Linux is an unauthorised derivative of its software and that commercial users of Linux may be legally liable for violation of intellectual copyright.

In a media release issued by its Sydney office, the SCO Group, which owns UNX, said Linux contained code which it claims as its intellectual property.

The company said that until "the attendant risks" with Linux were better understood and properly resolved, it would stop selling the Linux operating system.

Linux is the kernel of a computer operating system that allocates the machine's resources to other programs. The kernel is an essential part of an operating system, but useless by itself.

In March, SCO filed a case against IBM in the state court of Utah, alleging that Big Blue made concentrated efforts to improperly destroy the economic value of UNIX, particularly UNIX on Intel, to benefit IBM's new Linux services business.
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Chris Sontag, senior vice-president and general manager of SCOsource, which is trying to derive more income from the company's intellectual property, said today: "SCO is taking this important step because there are intellectual property issues with Linux.

"When SCO's own UNIX software code is being illegally copied into Linux, we believe we have an obligation to educate commercial users of the potential liability that could rest with them for using such software to run their business. We feel so strongly about this issue that we are suspending sales and distribution of SCO Linux until these issues are resolved."

SCO said it would continue to support existing SCO Linux and Caldera OpenLinux customers and hold them harmless from any SCO intellectual property issues regarding its Linux products.

Asked for comment, an IBM spokesman in Sydney said his company's policy was not to make statements on anything which could have a bearing on the case.

SCO has posted an analyst report from Gartner on its SCOsource site, entitled, "SCO Lawsuit Sends a Warning to Linux IS Shops." The report asks whether Linux is safe from encumbrances but also points out that SCO's claim that IBM misappropriated trade secrets from AIX will be difficult to prove.

SCO is part of the United Linux initiative along with three others companies that sell commercial Linux versions - SuSE, Conectiva and Turbo Linux. The four companies have been selling versions of Linux derived from a common base under their own brand names.

In 1995, SCO purchased the rights and ownership of UNIX and UnixWare that had been originally owned by AT&T. This included source code, source documentation, software development contracts, licenses and other intellectual property that pertained to UNIX-related business.

The company became the successor in interest to the UNIX software licenses originally licensed by AT&T Bell Laboratories to all UNIX distributors, including HP, IBM, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and many others.

Earlier this month, SCO said it would revoke IBM's AIX licence on June 13 this year, following Big Blue's response to the lawsuit over Unix copyrights.